Speed Art Museum

The Cressman Art Park is a three-acre landscape expansion to the Speed Art Museum that opened October 2025 after a journey of fifteen years from conceptualization to realization. Free and ungated, the Art Park welcomes the greater Louisville community to engage with works of contemporary sculpture from the Museum’s collection while immersed in the cooling shade of native trees and ecologically rich plantings. Sharing a campus with the University of Louisville, the project receives heavy use by students, faculty, museum visitors and the general public.

The vision of the Art Park was to expand the museum experience into the garden. Emphasizing interior to exterior connections, the park enhances the museum experience by extending views and spatial character from inside to outside, setting the museum within a garden. Simultaneously, it serves the larger community by providing free access to the outdoor sculpture collection, carefully sited within the landscape for the enjoyment by all.

The Cressman Art Park continues the long legacy of landscape design in Louisville. The City’s network of parks and parkways is widely considered one of the great works of landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, and Hargreave’s Riverfront Park became a prototype for reengaging urban waterfronts that has been repeated across the country. The Speed campus is among a new wave of landscape investment in the city, emphasizing community, connection, and wellness. The Art Park assert's the museum as an influential cultural entity within Louisville's urban park network.

The project centers the human experience by exemplifying core values of inclusivity and welcome. The central courtyard was fully dedicated to community gathering and art by rerouting all vehicles to the perimeter of the campus. Comfortable and flexible furnishings including communal tables with charging stations, and plantings with year-round interest, draw people into the landscape and encourage them to stay.

The Speed campus is situated in an evolving city, and the design responds to its complex adjacencies. Phase 1 of the project was completed in October 2025, and the next phase is underway, to be completed in concert with a University of Louisville project to reduce road infrastructure and expand the campus. The project will further enhance the program and curatorial opportunities of the park.